Culinary Archives

U.S. News and World Report, as part of their 50 Ways to Improve Your Life in 2007 issue, recommends creating a family cookbook to save family memories. While the story does not have much to say about how to store the recipes it does say a lot about not only the importance of a small scale preservation project, but also the management of the collection stage of such a project.

Importance
Author Linda Kulman notes that the memories of the taste of the food and the company who shared it are strong reasons to create collection such as a family cookbook. Like scrapbooks and photographs, recipe collections tell about the history of a family and a time. They also connect people.

Management
Kulman also gives suggestions for managing a family's recipe collection project, which we can use for our own families, but these concepts are helpful for managing the beginning stages of any archival project. Some lessons learned include:

• not all items in the collection will conform to the same format - be flexible to accept differences
• it will take time, even with technology
• it may be emotional
  
• one person should be the project manager, setting deadlines and encouraging participation
• people who wouldn't normally be involved can help and add different perspectives
• for collections that are ongoing (such as recipes) you can start with today and collect moving forward instead of doing research to collect items of the past
• the project can vary in scope, e.g. a family cookbook can include family photos, birth certificates, and handwritten items, in addition to the recipes

A large scale version of the family cookbook would be a culinary archive, such as the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, which contains thousands of items from the 1500s through the present, including menus, magazines, diaries, letters, advertisements, reference items, among other works.

Why and how do you save your and your family's recipes? Have you been involved in a family cookbook project - how was it organized? Does a family cookbook make it to your top 50 New Year's Resolutions for 2007? Why or why not?

Sources
Kulman, Linda. "Write Your Family Cookbook." U.S. News & World Report 141.24 (Dec 25, 2006): 68. Accessed 28 Dec. 2006 via http://www.usnews.com/usnews/health/articles/061217/25cookbook.family.htm

The horrors of... cellophane tape?

It's everywhere. In books from public libraries to academic institutions. It's in your used textbooks. You may have even put some in your own text books or children's books. Cellophane tape -- that clear tape that allows you to stop that rip but see through to the text below.

After all, nothing can be worse than a torn page, except one that evolves into a larger and larger rip. Why not mend it now with that ubiquitous clear adhesive tape? It's in your desk, in your drawer at home, in every grocery, drug and convenience store. It's practically a cure-all for paper.

In a recent preservation class at UIUC, a gasp filled the room as one student admitted to using cellophane tape before being enlightened by the course (of which cellophane tape has its 20 seconds of fame, a mere mention in the vastness of preservation). Come now, fess up, we've all done it -- well meaning, yet ill-advised beginners in book preservation and we can understand why others would tape their pages too.

What's the big deal about cellophane tape? It's not only terrible for the paper (it's acidic and causes pages to break down, it creates a ridge where a new rip can -- and usually does -- form, it yellows and the cellophane falls off leaving a sticky residue, etc.). But it's more than that.

Cellophane tape is the representation of how little is known about preservation in the wider community. Even many libraries use tape to repair tears. It shows how far we need to go in educating others about preservation -- not only in people's individual collections, but in libraries and archives.

I don't want to admonish current and previous cellophane tape users. They've (we've) all meant well, so let's admit we've all done it, but now that we know more, we can move on to other forms of repair.

Please share your tape stories or pictures below.


Additional Reading
NYU Library on Scotch Tape
Stamps & Scotch Tape
Penn State Special Collections Library: Rare Books & Manuscripts: FAQs on Preservation
Cons Dist List Post on "Preservation" Scotch Tape

Images from Getty Images. Image #BU006989

Should We Preserve That?

Preservation of murals sanctioned by communities or created by noted artists is something that fits into the preservation concern. A recent article in American Way shows murals in the subways of New York City. The murals are clearly works of art in a place which has usually been known for its graffiti. However, there are several books on the subject, which take a look at graffiti as art, and certainly there is a fine line in some cases between graffiti and a spray painted mural. In doing preservation, do we need to concern ourselves with such esoteric questions as "what is art?"

Graffiti has been called street art, urban art, subway art, spray paint art, urban calligraphy, and urban communication; it's also been called vandalism and crime. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, linked graffiti on subways in New York to urban crime. It has been associated with gangs, hip-hop, and pop culture. Still many consider there to be a "graffiti culture" and consider graffiti to be art.

If we do decide that graffiti is indeed worth saving, either as a form of art, communication, or of culture, we will have an additional challenge - social norms. Graffiti is considered unacceptable in many places, a social disgrace to a neighborhood, and something to be removed. Any number of actions have attempted to deter graffiti artists, including the preemptive ban on 18-22 year olds to buy certain spray paints and markers in New York City in early 2006; graffiti removal attempts have also been popular, either by chemical processes, painting over, resurfacing, removal, or replacement.


Logistically, graffiti is also usually outside - either on a wall or an automobile (train, subway train car, bus, truck, etc.). Therefore, it is usually exposed to a variety of weather conditions (changing temperature, humidity, perhaps direct sunlight) and therefore susceptible to mold, fading, wear, etc. In addition, the media used may not be easy to preserve -- trucks, subway cars, etc. are too large to bring to conservation labs, walls are inconvenient to move, and it may be difficult to do some preservation techniques outside.

Ironically there is some hope for some of the graffiti that we may want to preserve. Many graffiti artists "thoughtfully" choose media that will last, including paint that is difficult to remove and surfaces that accept that material, although the "buff" a solvent created in 1977 was able to clean subway cars and stamp out much of the enthusiasm of the graffiti subculture. However, other forms of preservation include photographs, art books of graffiti, and biographies on graffiti/graffiti subculture as another way of preserving this art in some form.


While most preservationists will probably not need to consider graffiti, they may be asked to preserve other things that do not comfortably fit with all members of society; or they may need to justify preserving those items. Banned books, pornographic magazines, racist propaganda, and other such controversial items come to mind. At this point librarians can reconsider questions that were perhaps asked during collection development -- a true opportunity to determine access of items that some people would deliberately destroy and stamp out of our culture, given the opportunity. We cannot think that if we don't preserve these items someone else will. In many cases someone else won't. But should they be preserved? What is the role of the preservationist? How do we balance these items and prioritize them?


Sources

ART. (2006). New York, Retrieved Friday, December 01, 2006 from the Academic Search Premier database.

Burg, J. (2006). Beauty, INTERRUPTED. Parks & Recreation, 41(9), 104-107. Retrieved Friday, December 01, 2006 from the Academic Search Premier database.

Galdwell, Malcolm. (2000). The Tipping Point: How little things can make a big difference. Boston : Little, Brown & Company, 2000.

Doherty, B. (2006). Free to Paint. Reason, 38(4), 8-8. Retrieved Friday, December 01, 2006 from the Academic Search Premier database.

Powers, L. (1996). Whatever Happened to the Graffiti Art Movement?. Journal of Popular Culture, 29(4), 137-142. Retrieved Friday, December 01, 2006 from the Academic Search Premier database.

Schnuer, Jenna. (2006). Line Art: Some of New York City's best artwork is underfoot -- literally. American Way. November 15, 2006.

Images from Getty Images. Image 71055513, 55992363, E006453.